Can you pinpoint the exact moment in time where you grew to like something?  Where you knew you’d develop a desire for something?  A singular moment in an infinite stream of experiences and passing seconds we take for granted, moving faster than life itsself.  For MMORPG gaming (massively multiplayer online roleplaying games) I can.  The obsession began nearly ten years ago, in Best Buy, with the exact same artwork shown in the banner above.  I had watched my cousin play Asheron’s Call for no more than a lazy half hour one afternoon, and I can remember being stunned by the concept:  an online world in which many players worldwide played and interacted in.  Gaming for me up to this point had been a solitary activity, or one done on a simple multiplayer mode with one’s siblings.  This was new.

I has received cash for my birthday and insisted my mother take me up to Best Buy as quickly as possible in order to buy the same game I had seen my cousin play.  But when I got to the games selection for MMORPGs, I hesitated.  Next to Asheron’s Call was another game, one that I had never seen or heard of, titled Everquest.   I had unfolded the flap on the front of the box and gazed wonderously at the artwork of strange and fascinating fantasy characters battling it out.  The back of the box promised an expansive world, a large community of fellow players, and hours of enjoyment.   So I bought Everquest instead.

Ten years later I’ve played a total of eleven different MMORPGs, with the current one being the very game I also met my husband in: World of Warcraft.  I went from being the complete noob to veteran player over the years and I am still going, still leveling characters, still doing quests, gaining armor and raiding dungeons.  But why?

My love for MMORPGs exist for the constant world.  A living, breathing society of players, some nice and others rude, some well played and other noobish, some neurotic and some just your average people.   A true spread of all walks that make up our actual world.  The world in which we play does not simply shut down when you stop playing.  It continues on, grows, expands, and changes around you.  Players selling and buying goods form a real working economy based on supply and demand.

MMOs cannot be beaten, they cannot be fully conquered, and you never truly reach an end point.  Whilst with single player game experiences you play a game that may have 5 to 10 hours of gameplay or, if you’re lucky, on upwards to 40 hours or more.  But regardless of the amount of hours of gameplay promised on the box, it will end.  You will eventually leave the world and the characters behind, possibly to never return to them.  With MMORPGs, the “magic” of the game experience continues, the characters you get to know and love are other people from around the world sharing in the same interests you have, and the world will continue to be persistant, ever changing, always there.

For the last 3 to 4 years my gaming experience has run along side my guild: Fist of the Empire.  The very clan I met Mark in.  I’ve not only had the privledge of meeting a bunch of these characters in real life, but also forged friendships with them.  this is part of what makes the MMO gaming experience so rewarding.  A group of people, of friends, can come together in a game and work with each other to accomplish goals, to raid dungeons, or to build up the guild.  Many who don’t game this way may never fully understand the dynamics but, simply put, do you know how much it takes to get 40 people together and focused for a couple of hours, each doing their own individual role, to accomplish a task?  It’s no easy feat, not even in the real world.  But when it happens, it’s simply amazing.

I’ve bounced between titles over the years,  returning to Everquest a number of times but never for very long, and then onto the next title.  But one thing was always certain: I’ve always has a subscription set up to one game or another.  I’ve never lost that desire to be apart of that fantasy world, to log in and assume the role of the valiant knight or illustrious elf,  to meet new people and play with the ones I’ve grown to know over the past couple of years, and to make my own character the best it can be.  This is why I pay, this is why I log in, this is why sometimes, I may even go to bed at unreasonable hours.

This is why I love MMO gaming.

Posted Gaming, Nerdom |